Hearing Views

By David H. Kirkwood Last year, following Brenda Battat’s announcement that she would be retiring in 2013 as executive director of the Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA), that organization sent out a press release about its search for her successor. It stated that applicants for the job should be “visionary, dynamic, diplomatic, highly competent, organized, warm, collaborative, and have

By Brian Taylor Last week at Hearing Views, I talked about why so many audiologists and other hearing care providers look out from their offices and see empty waiting rooms. I also discussed some defense strategies that practitioners can deploy to protect our profession from disruptive innovations that threaten its future. This week, I’m suggesting some offensive strategies that will

By Brian Taylor I really enjoyed Jerry Northern’s recent article posted on A.U Bankaitis’s blog. If you haven’t read it, I urge you to do so. As the title of his post suggests, it is indeed time for us to “wake up” and collectively embrace a future filled with disruptive innovations–many of which will undoubtedly force us to redefine the audiologist’s

By Ruth Bentler and Kassie McLaughlin The University of Iowa has made a huge commitment to persons with hearing loss in its decision to loop all upcoming construction on the campus! As a result of the devastating flood of 2008, a number of buildings were damaged and will now be rebuilt at higher elevations (yes, even Iowa City has different

By David H. Kirkwood There is an amazing amount of hearing research being conducted in laboratories around the world, as I know from constantly scouring the web for reports on the latest discoveries. For example, scientists at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, Harvard Medical School and the Harvard Program in Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology recently identified the role of

By Fred Cohen Prisons are not supposed to be pleasant, accommodating facilities, correct? Do the crime, do the time echoes through the neighborhood bar and on the first tee at a more remote country club. The problem with this thinking is that our prisons are so unaccommodating that when those who have done their time make their inevitable return to

By David H. Kirkwood Several of the major hearing aid manufacturers and the non-profit organizations they fund do a lot of good work in the U.S. and overseas. For example, the Starkey Hearing Foundation has donated and fitted hundreds of thousands of hearing aids on people in countries all over the world. Hear the World, Sonova’s international initiative creates awareness

By Kevin Liebe, Brenna Carroll, and Heather Segars Only 20 states mandate some form of health insurance coverage for children’s hearing aids. So, if you reside in any of the other 30, it is likely that you are among the millions of American families who have no such coverage on your plan. The financial implications of hearing loss can be

  Last week on Hearing Views, several of my fellow editors at HearingHealthMatters.org responded to my request for their thoughts on  BioAid, “a free mobile app,” that, according to the university where it was developed, “turns an iPhone or iPod into a hearing aid that could revolutionize the future for people with hearing loss.” The April 17 post ended with

As editor of the Hearing News Watch blog, I am constantly finding items online heralding some breakthrough in technology that will render traditional hearing aids obsolete. Typically, it is said that these new devices will cost a small fraction of what today’s hearing aids sell for. What’s more, they will not require users to get professional help to obtain and